Has it really come to this? That a mother has to assert her child’s civil rights to be let alone from government intrusion, via the pro-Common Core/anti public schools mob?? That a child can be interrogated by Chicago Public Schools for opting out of an abusive test?
Who are the bullies in this scenario? Because it ain’t the kids…
Reclaim Reform has a post up on the twitter storm demanding Congressional investigation into the profiteering of standardized testing.
From the link to NPE:
How good are the tests?
Problems with the actual content of tests have been extensively documented. There are numerous instances of flawed questions and design, including no right answer, more than one right answer, wording that is unclear or misleading, reading passages or problems that are developmentally inappropriate or contain product placements, test questions on material never taught, and items that border on bizarre, such as a famous example that asked students to read a passage about a race between a pineapple and a hare. Tests are not scientific instruments like barometers; they are commercial products that are subject to multiple errors.
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Diane Ravitch has a post up on Linda Darling-Hammond testimony at the Vergara trial. She outlines the criteria for evaluating teachers for tenure and helping struggling teachers:
“Well, it’s important both as a part of a due process expectation; that if somebody is told they’re not meeting a standard, they should have some help to meet that standard.
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Absolutely. If a teacher is abusive or grossly inadequate, you want them out. But if a teacher is good in some areas, but needs help in others, by all means, they should get support and encouragement in those weak areas. In any line of work, you would expect some guidance from those more experienced. Why should the teaching profession be any different?
More:
And the third reason is that when you create a system that is not oriented to attract high-quality teachers and support them in their work, that location becomes a very unattractive workplace. And an empirical proof of that is the situation currently in Houston, Texas, which has been firing many teachers at the bottom end of the value-added continuum without creating stronger overall achievement, and finding that they have fewer and fewer people who are willing to come apply for jobs in the district because with the instability of those scores, the inaccuracy and bias that they represent for groups of teachers, it’s become an unattractive place to work.
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Word.
This comment by Teacher Ken gets at the heart of teaching and tenure:
I have been the cooperating teacher for five student teachers from the University of Maryland at College Park, three from the undergraduate program and two from the masters’ program. The only one who failed to ‘make it’ was a 4.0 student who refused to listen to the notion that he had to meet the kids where they were in order to be able to inspire/entice them to move further. He dropped out before doing his full load of student teaching.
I have been a building union rep and have served as an informal mentor to both beginning and struggling experienced teachers. I have helped some turn around and have counseled others out of the profession. I have as a union rep helped remove a tenured teacher (who never should have gotten tenure) who was not merely ineffective but a danger to students.
We have those who should never go into teaching – they don’t like kids.
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This can’t be stated enough–the pro-Charter, anti-public schools, anti-Teacher’s union mob would like to play on people’s emotions and say that bad teachers get a free ride once they get tenure.
As Diane has stated in the past, tenured teachers are not guaranteed a job, per se, but are guaranteed the right to a fair hearing if charges are made against them. That seems reasonable to me.
However, I have heard of instances of bad teachers being kept on because the principal was afraid to confront them. They feel they had to have mountains of evidence to get rid of a bad teacher. It might also be just a clash of personalities…where the child is better suited for another teacher. The teacher isn’t necessarily bad and the kid isn’t necessarily bad, but they just butt heads.
On the other hand, I would not want to see a teacher sacked over gossip (lack of solid evidence)…because I’ve seen that happen, too, where some big mouth started a rumor and the good teacher left. He was one of those teachers that really connected with the kids, too. The gossipmonger was probably jealous of his ability to connect and the resulting popularity.
And Teacher Ken’s point about the 4.0 teaching student is spot on. You can be the smartest person in the room, but if you don’t like kids and can’t get down to their level to help them learn, you’re in the wrong profession. (Gee…why does this describe Bill Gates to a “T”…??)
This is one of the most compelling letters I’ve read so far. It’s sickening how these little children are being forced to perform at levels above their comprehension and emotional growth. It’s abuse, plain and simple. Bill Gates is a child abuser…why isn’t he held accountable??
Kids had to solve 8+6 when the answer choices were 0-9 and had to DRAG AND DROP first a 1 then a 4 to form a 14. There were questions where it was only necessary to click an answer but the objects were movable (for no reason). There were kids tapping on their neighbor’s computers in frustration. To go to the next question, one clicks “next” in lower right-hand corner…..which is also where the pop-up menu comes up to take you to other programs or shut down, so there were many instances of shut-downs and kids winding up in a completely different program.
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Some of the links in the letter:
Gates dining with 80 Senators. Eighty. Unfortunately, it stops short of naming names. So, I went looking for other reports to try to find out the senators’ names…no such luck. All that I could find were quoting Politico.
On Politico’s site, I found this little tidbit:
SPOTTED: Political odd-couple Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) having dinner last night at Bistro Bis just off Capitol Hill. Sen. Joe Donnelly later strolled over with a big group to say hi. (h/ts: @ZStoller and @dsamuelsohn) Pic here: http://bit.ly/1qyM4dx
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Wanna bet Joe Donnelly was one of those senators that dined with Gates?
And from this link:
There is a growing body of evidence that the Common Standards are not the solution to make America more competitive, to make kids smarter in math, reading and science, and any of the other ills that have been cast upon the education system. I’ve reported on this blog that independent research questions the efficacy of a standard-based approach to education as it is now conceived. The standards-based system is a top-down authoritarian system that disregards the professional decision-making ability of classroom teachers. I’ve reported research by Wallace that shows that this authoritarian accountability system is a barrier to teaching and learning.
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[…]
….the Gates Foundation has invested about $2.3 billion into the Common Standards and related efforts.
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Bill and Melinda Gates are not educators. Why does their $$$ opinion $$$ matter more than those who are educators and don’t wish to abuse children?!
Diane Ravitch posted a link to this biting piece. Apparently, Rhee knew when it comes to her failed education mandates, she was going to get schooled by Diane.
And yet…she is still telling the American public she knows whats best for their children.
Raginghorse blog has a personal story up on the blast yesterday in New York. Understandably, the first concern is what happened and how to take care of the kids if something bad is going down. (Think an online educator is going to do that…?/snark)
I think it illustrates the need to not taking anything for granted. You never know what the new day will hold. Living in the moment…
Diane Ravitch has posted this on Eva Moskowitz’s loose version of the facts.
Moskowitz’s Success Academy 4 has almost none of the highest special needs students as compared to nearby Harlem public schools. In a school with nearly 500 students, Success Academy 4 has zero, or one, such students, while the average Harlem public school includes 14.1 percent such students. With little sense of irony or embarrassment, Moskowitz has attacked Bill de Blasio for preventing the school’s expansion inside PS 149. Her school’s expansion would have come at the cost of space for students with disabilities. The school has already lost “a fully equipped music room … A state-mandated SAVE room … A computer lab… Individual rooms for occupational and physical therapy … and the English Language Learners (ELL) classroom,” due to earlier Success Academy expansions in the same building.
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Moskowitz made a number of other claims during her Morning Joe appearance. She said “we are self-sustaining on the public dollar alone.” In fact, Success Academyspends $2,072 more per student than schools serving similar populations. This additional funding comes from donations by the very same hedge fund moguls who have donated over $400,000 to Governor Cuomo’s re-election campaign (charter supporters in the financial and real estate sector have contributed some $800,000 to Governor Cuomo’s campaign).
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Jan Resseger posts about the dangerous bipartisan conventional *cough* wisdom.
As early as 1989, President George H.W. Bush, responding to fears that the United States was becoming uncompetitive, launched a movement based on standards, assessments, and accountability by convening an education summit of the nation’s governors, chaired by Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas, to agree on national education goals. Through the 1990s states began to embrace test-based accountability. Then in 2001, when Congress—under President George W. Bush—reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, with a new name, “No Child Left Behind,” the federal government mandated test-and-punish.
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Once again, the Bushes and Clintons responsible for so much destruction and misery.
Today, DN hosted a debate between public schools and charters. The car salesman, er I mean, charter school proponent, Steve Barr,of Green Dot, who was behind the fiasco of Los Angeles schools, Parent Revolution, and Brian Jones , a public school teacher now pursuing a doctorate.
Barr did the usual charter proponent schtick: he tried to once again pull the wool over the public’s eye and say that charter schools were public schools; he refused to answer direct questions (because he knew it would make charters look bad); and repeatedly stated he was a “progressive”. Yeah, right. Just like Bill Clinton is a progressive. Wink, wink. Nod, nod.
He was pushing the “progressive” schtick a little too much in hopes that would make opponents back down, I guess, because he’s a “good guy”. Pffft. He also lied about charters NOT being about profit. Thankfully, he got called on that….but some key points were not countered by Amy or Juan. I was disappointed in that.
Finally, Reclaim Reform has a post up on Diane and the FUD, or Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt propaganda campaign to destroy public education. This is one of the psychological techniques used in communications that turned my stomach and why I would never be in PR. Fear, sex, anger, and love are the top communications techniques to persuade people….keep that in mind, folks, whenever you view any type of media: spoken word, radio, TV, internet, printed, etc.
Related to this, the local school administration said this on the radio: “A teacher can ask the student how many nickels equal a quarter…but if they go to a computer, it can be illustrated how many nickels equal a quarter, and then a dollar, and so on…” (may not be verbatim, but close). What I heard from that is two things: 1) teachers are boring, so we have to have computer animation; and 2) another way to slip online/computer learning as a replacement of live, human beings. I personally would have illustrated how many nickels equal a quarter by bringing out five nickels. I would always use visual cues to help kids understand. This is especially important for dyslexics, of which I am one.
And a question that keeps rolling around in my head is…why are these people called philanthropists? Isn’t philanthropy giving money away, not expecting anything in return? ‘Cause the Broads, Clintons, Bushes, Gates, and billionaires boys clubs absolutely expect to gain from their so-called philanthropy. Absolutely. So I don’t see that this is philanthropy, but should be called “investment”…
Ken Previtti has this up on the bullying of Chicago Teachers….a modern day twist of McCarthyism, where if you don’t tow the line, you’re blacklisted via losing certification.
Democracy, meet dictatorship.
This is unconscionable. The teachers refuse to subject the kids to it. The parents don’t want it. And the kids certainly don’t benefit from it. As Ken states, the only people that benefit are the education profiteer$ who sell the test prep, the tests, scoring the tests, and anything else they can think of to profit.
Are the parents not taxpayers? Are the teachers not taxpayers? And the public taxpayer who does not want CCSS? Again I ask, if the taxpayers don’t want this…then why are their wishes being ignored?
Meanwhile, in Indiana, they are going to push online learning to make up for all the snow days we had this winter….nice way to shoehorn the kids into online learning…
…and get rid of teachers altogether.
David Sirota has this up on Eva Moskowitz, queen of charters in NY. She closed the schools to bus children to her rally. Unfreakingbelievable. Can you imagine anyone in public education being allowed to do that?? They would be fired.
Next, we have this from Fred Klonsky on the close ties of pro-charter education profiteers and our elected representatives. Sleazy opportunists.
One notorious group, “Democrats for Education Reform” (DFER), is a front for financiers that seek to spread charter schools in Chicago, even at the expense of neighborhood public schools. DFER has given extensive support to Christian Mitchell, placing him on their “Hot List of 2012” and naming him their “Reformer of the Month” for January 2014, in which they solicited political contributions on his behalf.
Rep. Mitchell has also accepted over $100,000 in political contributions from “Stand for Children,” an organization that wants to defund public education through voucher programs and other failed policies that only hurt Chicago students.
Last year, Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed 50 neighborhood schools which put more than 80,000 children at risk. The closings are the largest in U.S. history. Rep. Mitchell showed little support to his constituents as they protested the drastic action. Instead, he has loudly supported private charter expansion, which research shows have little accountability and a questionable academic success rate.
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In more education news, Fred Klonsky has this up about DFER and David Axelrod.
Julian Vasquez Helig, PhD, has a great summary of the billionaires’ club influence on public education and charters here.
Diane Ravitch features a poem by a teacher who couldn’t take any more.
Their innocence plundered their self now askew,
They hardened completely while no one even knew.Their spirits were taken their childhood replaced
A new breed of children – a much meaner race.Now where are those sadists who made up such rules
to torture young children with cruel cunning ruse?They’re safe in their castles no thoughts of that time,
When children were maimed by their heinous crime~~~~~~~~~~~
Woot! Teachers taking back their classrooms! The tactics of intimidation by Barbara Byrd-Bennett did not work.
…and the teachers, bless their hearts, still taught a lesson in civil disobedience and nonviolence, a la Ghandi and Rosa Parks.
Makes me smile. 🙂
Eagle 
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